Scaling Training to Scale the Business
Industry: E-Commerce
Challenge
A global e-commerce firm was experiencing immense growth that, in turn, was spiking the demand for live customer service. Opening and growing contact centers were stretching both recruiting and training capacity. This was in addition to maintaining existing staffing levels in an industry that averages a 30-40 percent annual attrition rate. Expanding existing training team size was not cost-effective due to the seasonal swing of the business. The training team was a significant bottleneck to the company growing at the speed of business.
Action
Stakeholder meetings and other research revealed:
- Historical bias of learning & development leadership to hire experienced training staff from outside the organization rather than internal development and promotion.
- Lack of confidence in the subject matter expertise of the trainers, and high variability in subject matter expertise and training delivery skills across the global team.
- Lack of career advancement opportunities was one key reason for attrition of associates.
In response, I developed a 2-tier program to expand the training team capacity by training high-performing associates as mentors, then trainers. Associates would deliver during times of hiring surges, then return to their regular roles when demand abated. The formal training team trained, supervised, and coached the associates.
Results
This program allowed the training team to expand as needed to fully meet demand, then flex smaller during low-demand times, maintaining a smaller – thus less costly – training team. This program also became the first professional development program for the division, preparing the trained associates for promotions to supervisor and formal trainer roles. This, in turn, boosted associate engagement and retention, lowering recruiting and onboarding costs.
Centralizing Translation Services for Cost/Quality Control and Ease of Use
Industry: International Non-Profit
Challenge
A global health non-profit spanning over 30 countries and a range of programs had a decentralized approach to retaining translation service vendors, which were in constant demand. Each department would negotiate a contract with one or more vendors, each with its own terms and cost structure. This approach created inefficiencies and quality control issues.
Action
I developed a centralized vendor management program for these services, balancing the linguistic needs, the volume requirement, and pricing. Vendors were screened and monitored for quality and customer service. A simplified, centralized, process was established for all teams to use the approved resources.
I partnered with the Procurement and Operational Excellence teams to both select the vendors in a competitive process and promote the program to increase use. As part of the program, customer satisfaction data is gathered and analyzed for quality control and future contract negotiations.
Results
This program reduces the administrative load for both the departments ordering the services and the procurement department that approves vendor contracts. As well, the centralized program site and promotion reduces barriers to access by departments with new translation needs. The quality monitoring and competitive nature of the program works to promote continuous improvement in both service and pricing.
Creating and Managing a Learning Event Content Program
Industry: Global Software Development Company
Challenge
A major, multinational technology company did not have global professional development conferences for its software developer population. This slowed adoption of new, internal technology tools and process innovations and was a gap in its employee engagement and retention activities.
A new team was formed to develop and deliver an annual, learning conference series with a global reach. The schedule included three, three-day, in-person conferences per year, with one conference in the Americas, one in Europe, and one in Asia. Each event was to have 30-50 sessions across 4-6 tracks depending on size and learning needs of the learner population in each region. Each event was also live-streamed and recorded for maximum reach.
The series was to begin within nine months of the team’s inception. I joined the team to establish, develop and manage the learning content program.
Action
For each event, I partnered with key stakeholders to determine what content tracks would best meet the organization’s greatest business needs at the time for the region. I then partnered with a team of volunteer track managers from the areas of the business to identify the most important, timely, and interesting topics and source and recruit the best subject matter experts for each topic. Once topics and presenters were chosen, I worked with the presenters to hone their material and presentation skills to ensure each was informative, engaging, and not overwhelming. This included ensuring accessibility for those who were hearing-impaired and for whom English is a second language via live, human-interpreted transcriptions added as subtitles to the live stream and recordings.
This resulted in hundreds of live presentations and workshops as well as a library of resulting recordings and reference materials. The live stream and recording library expanded the reach of the event from venue capacity to all of the organization’s 50,000+ technical employees.
Results
Attendance in each region grew annually, with consistent quality scores of presentations. Content quality scores rated over 4.0 on a 1-5 Likert scale overall, and presenter experience rated at or above 4.1. Over this period of time, the annual, software developers’ engagement scores related to learning and growth opportunities consistently rose.
